1. Statement of the Technical Field
The invention concerns communication systems, data processing system, and data storage systems. More particularly, the invention concerns systems and methods for allocating asynchronous information to residual channel spaces.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multiplexing of data processing and communications tasks has become increasingly more important as the amount of data being processed and/or transmitted continues to increase. For example, in the case of satellite communications, existing satellites have only a limited amount of transmission resources that need to be multiplexed for a relatively large number of users. Similarly, data processing systems typically have a finite amount of resources that need to be multiplexed for a relatively large number of users.
Although the amount of system resources can be increased to provide additional processing or transmission capacity needed, this is often impractical or cost prohibitive. For instance, in order to increase satellite transmission capacity, the satellite hardware typically must be upgraded or replaced. This generally requires that the satellite be captured in orbit and/or returned to earth safely, followed by reconfiguration of the satellite prior to reinsertion into orbit. Alternatively, a new satellite can be inserted into orbit to provide the additional capacity. In either approach, new satellite component costs and spaceflight costs are typically high. Similarly, in the case of data processing resources, the additional costs to provide increased processing power (hardware, software, operation, and maintenance costs) are generally high. As a result of such costs, conventional systems typically utilize scheduling techniques to multiplex the user tasks using the limited resources available.
Conventional scheduling techniques generally enable scheduling of multiple user tasks. For example, in the case of satellite communications, only a limited number of communications channels are generally available. To allow multiple users to access these channels, the signals exchanged between the satellite and a receiving station make use of time division multiple access (TDMA) methods. That is, for each satellite transmission channel, the use of the channel is multiplexed over periods of time (frames) to allow multiple users access to the same channel by evaluating the current time slot arrangement of the satellite channels and allocating to a user the first available timeslot(s) in a channel. Similarly, processing capacity is typically allocated to user tasks by determining the first available processing time slot in the channels.